JK floods: NDRF deploys 'boat hospitals', turns to relief ops

After undertaking rescue operation in the flood-ravaged Jammu and Kashmir, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) is now focusing on relief operations and had deployed 'boat hospitals' in water logged areas to provide health care facilities to the stranded people.
"We have changed our role. For the last one week we were undertaking rescue operations but now we have begun doing relief works. We have converted a number of our existing boats to act as floating hospitals or you can call it a 'boat hospital'," NDRF Director General (DG) O P Singh told PTI.
Singh, who has been camping in the J-K summer capital for last one week, said a team of doctors and paramedics had been deployed on these boats and they were now visiting those areas where people are stuck and need immediate health care.

An NDRF team from Arakkonam in Tamil Nadu has been deployed for this special task.
As the current situation enters into the ninth or the tenth day, Singh said, it is important to concentrate on providing health facilities to the people, whether in their marooned homes or relief camps.
"We have been able to give out 34 tons of relief material and food in the affected areas. We are encountering a number of instances where people do not want to be evacuated but they just want rations, milk, water, medicine, clothes, tents and some ready-to-eat meals. We are doing that now," said Singh.

He is personally manning the make-shift NDRF control room established in the technical area of the airport here.
The DG said close to 40 NDRF boats have also suffered "extensive damages" as they had to be manoeuvred in the narrow by-lanes of Kashmir valley.
"About 40 boats have been rendered non-functional. We are left with about 100 boats now but that is not a cause of worry as the Army has dropped in a number of its boats too," he said.